Critical Essay by Sumner J. Ferris

Flannery O'Connor's [The Violent Bear It Away] has a number of immediately striking resemblances, in its religious theme, its Southern setting, its frequently violent or macabre action, and its spiritually tortured characters, both to her short stories, especially those collected in A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), and to her first and only other novel, Wise Blood (1952). (p. 11)

Disregarding both the more and less obvious matters for the time being, there are several parallels between [The Violent Bear It Away] and some of Miss O'Connor's other works. Haze Motes in Wise Blood, like Tarwater here, was obsessed first with denying and then with accepting Christ. Harry Bevel in "The River" was drowned in "the water of life," as is Bishop. The relation between the boy and his great-uncle, especially in the flashback recounting a visit by the...